A Meditation on Love…

Intuition is louder when you are still.

Angela Gorringe

Take a few minutes to sit and breathe. Pay attention to the feel of your breath. Take time to remind yourself to trust that all is proceeding along lines planned by God and executed in Jesus. Picture yourself using your freedom to say whatever needs to be said, whatever needs doing to be done, within the boundary of turning your life and will over to the care of God.

Imagine all the free time that will emerge when our decisions are in alignment with our values. Love God? Then we love our neighbor too, right? So we don’t need to complain, critique, criticize, judge, or try to change them.

Love your neighbor? That’s hard to do at times! But it is far more compelling to focus on how to do THAT than it is to spend time trying to make excuses for why you should not have to love them.

An Attitude of Acceptance

The scriptures remind us in so many ways how much God knows about us and how little we understand ourselves. Maybe today we could go to the source for our self-understanding. God, hear our cries!

While mindfulness encourages us to dis-identify with our thoughts, meditation does not. Meditators encourage us to simply observe, observe, observe. We are asked to observe our thoughts, feelings and body sensations. The only real caveat is that we are encouraged to have an attitude of acceptance and loving kindness toward ourselves. It is a simple way to practice surrender to God. I usually start my daily quiet time like this: “God, I am sitting here in acknowledgement of my reality: you are God and I am not.” Some days, that is all I need to say. Research studies are reporting that meditation is highly effective in the intervention of use disorders. It has also proven effective in the treatment of chronic pain, anxiety disorders and depression. Tiger spends an unhappy day thinking that his parents, friends, and school mates do not like him. How would this affect your mental health if you thought the world was out to get you? What difference would it make in your life if you looked through the lens of abundance rather than being shackled to the law of scarcity?

God makes everything come out right;

he puts victims back on their feet.

He showed Moses how he went about his work,

opened up his plans to all Israel.

God is sheer mercy and grace;

not easily angered, he’s rich in love.

He doesn’t endlessly nag and scold,

nor hold grudges forever.

He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve,

nor pay us back in full for our wrongs.

As high as heaven is over the earth,

so strong is his love to those who fear him.

And as far as sunrise is from sunset,

he has separated us from our sins.

As parents feel for their children,

God feels for those who fear him.

He knows us inside and out,

keeps in mind that we’re made of mud.

Psalm 103:6-14, The Message

Meditation Moment

A prayer for people who are afraid they cannot or will not be forgiven…

God, our hand is in my life and in all my ways.

Keep me from fluttering about in my faith; give me the faith to settle in and live as a faithful person.

I ask because I am ambivalent; my decisions are inconsistent; I do not live according to your will - instead, I fixate on my own.

Cut me off before my compulsions become my thoughts and my thoughts become my actions.

You are good, patient and kind; grant me that I might be and do the same.

Save me from myself, from the deceit of ego, the treachery of my nature, the denial of my offenses.

I know that many of my desires are a contradiction.

I live as though I am testing your patience.

O, Father, don’t cast me away and drive me from your presence. Open my heart that it may heal; make me whole and holy.

Meditation Moment

Suddenly the cherries were there although I had forgotten that cherries exist.

Gunter Grass, “Transformation”

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10 NIV

Today, consider your weakness. Accept it. Rejoice in it, for these broken places may indeed end up being your strength. Your hope. Your experience. Your superpower.

Meditation Moment

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

Charles Bukowski, “how is your heart?”

Take time today to sit and ponder. What do you need? What do you need to support your own change and transformational work? Who can you ask for support? What resources might be available, one google away? What keeps you from seeking and finding the resources you need to live your best life?